Newsletter November 2002-11-08
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Members’ Newsletter: March 2008 TO ALL VCT MEMBERS: You are cordially invited to attend the Opening by the Mayor of Keighley of Vintage Carriages Trust’s Special Exhibition marking the 40th Anniversary of the Grand Re-Opening of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. On: Saturday 22nd March 2008 At: the Vintage Carriages Trust’s Museum of Rail Travel Time: 2.15 for 2.35 pm. RSVP! If you are intending to be present please contact Dave Carr (VCT Honorary Secretary) by phone on 01759 304176, by email at [email protected] or by post to Dave Carr, Vintage Carriages Trust, c/o The Railway Station, Haworth, Keighley, West Yorkshire BD22 8NJ. VCT’s tribute to the KWVR - 40 years since Re-Opening Above is your invitation to the launch of VCT’s Special Exhibition in tribute to the 40th Anniversary of the Re-Opening of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway – the first train left Keighley at 2.35 pm on Saturday 29th June 1968. As you will remember from the last Newsletter, we applied to the Big Lottery for a grant of £5,000 to stage this tribute to the Railway and give an opportunity for local people to celebrate this achievement. Unfortunately the Big Lottery was not able to support this application. However, our Chairman (never one to be deterred by set- backs) has worked towards gathering some funds, which, although not as substantial as the hoped-for grant would have been, do ensure that the planned Exhibition will go ahead. Thanks are due to those Members who donated towards this project – obviously your contributions are still very welcome due to the absence of this grant money. We also give very grateful thanks to the Keighley Festival Committee which has contributed the good sum of £500 to the project, and to the Worth Valley Railway itself for its help and support. Please do let Dave know if you are able to attend this special day when USA 0-6-0T locomotive No. 72 and our Metropolitan Railway Brake coach No. 427 will be on display – resplendent in the colours they carried when they formed part of the Re-Opening train, 40 years ago. Our 9-compartment Metropolitan Railway coach No. 465 and our “South Eastern & Chatham” coach No. 3554 also formed part of the Re-Opening train and will be on display: but not in the liveries they carried 40 years ago! The display will be in place throughout the 40th Anniversary Year. Other items on display will include some interesting paperwork on loan from the Railway’s archives. This will include notes of some of the early meetings which resulted in the formation of the K&WVRPS, also the Roster for the re-opening day. There’s lots of familiar names, with quite a number still around and very active on the Railway today. Come and see whose names you recognise. As you might expect, the Railway itself is planning a number of special events over this period. Doubtless details will be announced shortly. Our own Exhibition at Ingrow will close in October. USA locomotive No. 72 will then return to the Railway’s Oxenhope Exhibition Shed, and our Metropolitan Brake coach will be returned to “London Transport Brown” more closely matching that of the Nine-Compartment coach No. 465. Railway Forum magazine of Summer/Autumn 1967 reminds us that the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway could so easily have died in the 1960s and joined the former Great Northern line as a green corridor. The efforts of the then Members of the K&WVRPS were described by Railway Forum as of “a very vigorous preservation society which has been negotiating for the re-opening of the line. Indeed, without the efforts of the preservation society the track would have undoubtedly have been lifted long ago.” We hope that the VCT’s contribution to the year will be a tribute to all those who ensured that the Re-Opening took place, that the Railway continued, and that it is all still here to be enjoyed by visitors, by volunteers, and by all local people. Locomotive No. 72 is owned (as indeed it was forty years ago, and more) by K&WVRPS Vice- President Richard Greenwood. It has now been repainted from the “British Railways Black” livery it has carried for many years past whilst on display at the Oxenhope Exhibition building to the livery it carried on the day of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway Re-Opening Special train of June 1968. This is a traditional American style including the numbering and lettering and a silver smoke box. The photo shows No. 72 almost completed and now on display in our Museum. This repainting was carried out by Tim Hanson, well know as Push & Pull editor as well as a regular volunteer in the Railway’s locomotive department. He carried out the work in our Workshop, our Midland Railway coach having been taken to Oxenhope to allow space for this to happen. The footplate floor has had the attention of Stuart Mellin to make it safe to enter. Stuart is also constructing steps so that all can reach the footplate in safety, and has made a laminated glass screen so that our visitors can look without touching the controls, which will be labelled appropriately. It is a necessary part of being involved in shunting the building at Ingrow to be good at playing chess (and to be able to use a measuring tape!). Each move has an effect on the rest of the display. Moving locomotive No. 72 from Oxenhope to our Workshop at Ingrow was a very good example of this intricate planning. The photo opposite (top) shows No. 72 very unusually temporarily beside our locomotive Lord Mayor, outside our Museum building. A further shunt took place as two of the Trust’s Metropolitan Railway coaches (the Nine-Compartment and the Brake) departed for their “Annie and Clarabel” duty for the National Railway Museum’s “Thomas” event. The space freed up by their departure allowed us to welcome into the Workshop Class 101 Driving Motor Brake Second 51189, being one half of the Railway’s second diesel multiple unit – seen opposite (centre) almost ready to leave the Workshop. Chris Smith has been able to spend almost four weeks working on the exterior of this vehicle. This has mainly been making good life-expired sheet metalwork around the windows and elsewhere, followed by anti-rust treatment, priming and painting. With the assistance of Andy Tarran (who has recently joined the Railway’s full- time staff at Haworth Locomotive Yard), his father Mike (who as a volunteer looks after fire and other safety aspects for us at Ingrow) and others (notably Robert Green) a great deal of work has been done on this vehicle, which just wouldn’t have happened had it been at its normal location on the siding at the rail side of Haworth Shed. This job will also earn the Trust some much- needed money – and we look forward to the possibility of further contract work as and when space is available in our Workshop, either by carriages being in use elsewhere or by the Railway finding temporary suitable accommodation at Haworth or at Oxenhope. At the time of writing the two coaches are expected back from the National Railway Museum within the next very few days. There will then be another significant shunt with the DMU vehicle returning to Haworth and our Metropolitan Brake vehicle going into our Workshop. Chris will then repaint the Brake into the “Oxford Blue and Primrose” livery it carried forty years ago, ready for yet another significant shunt to position it with locomotive No. 72 for the Exhibition. As previously noted, this will be opened on Saturday 22nd March – that’s in rather less than five weeks’ time. Chris will not be alone in looking forward to a rather less hectic programme of work over the Summer! Scammell Farewell In the midst of all this activity there is one vehicle which will no longer be causing space problems as we say farewell to one of our old friends. The Scammell Mechanical Horse, registration number CAN 863 and owned by Tate & Lyle Sugar, is to move permanently in the near future to the Midland Railway Centre at Butterley. We have grown to be very fond of this vehicle which we have over the years restored to its present excellent condition without any outside funding. Sadly this particular vehicle has no railway associations at all, having spent its working life at Tate & Lyle’s Silvertown refinery in East London. The Scammell achieved headlines some years ago – or, rather, Jackie Cope did – when as the named VCT Officer she received a Notice of Intended Prosecution from the police in Bolton that she had been seen speeding in this vehicle on a road in that area. As the Mechanical Horse was at that time in small pieces on the Workshop floor it was easy to get her (and it) out of trouble. You may remember it turned out to be a Belgian car which had the same somewhat historic number. Perhaps the “B for Belgium” disc on the car also gave some clue? This incident reached every single transport magazine over the next few months bringing good publicity for the Trust, if not for Jackie! We are sure that the vehicle will be well looked after by the Midland Road Transport Group, which now has a purpose-built shed on the Midland Railway Centre’s site. Here they display buses, road rollers and other vehicles.